Now Things Get Interesting: The Ubiquitous Barcode Gets Internet-connected

Now Things Get Interesting: The Ubiquitous Barcode Gets Internet-connected

March 2, 2018

EVRYTHNG’s vision is every product in the world connected to the Web, delivering value for consumers, brands, manufacturers and retailers with data-driven intelligence, insight and applications. Our mission is to enable one trillion products to be online with digital identities in the cloud by 2020.

Today we can report that accomplishing this mission just got a major turbo-boost.

Trillions of products around the world use the barcode. In fact over 5 billion scans happen every day in retail locations across the planet. The BBC named the GS1 barcode as one of “the 50 things that made the world economy.” Now, GS1 has kicked-off a process to enhance and extend the standard barcode.

This enables every product to have a web address, using standard GS1 product identifiers, and makes it possible for the same code on a product, in the form of a QR code or NFC tag, to work with both retail points of sale AND smartphones for direct-to-consumer applications. With billions of iOS and Android smartphones now able to automatically read and scan NFC and QR codes, brands can tap into a huge global audience who can interact with physical products. Millions of people already scan proprietary smart codes from WeChat, Snapchat, Facebook, Amazon and others.

The time for mass-scale product digitization is now.

EVRYTHNG is co-chairing the GS1 working group on a new specification, called GS1 URI, working alongside some of the largest consumer product brands and retailers in the world. In January GS1 issued a call to action whose mission objective is for “GS1 identifiers to become linkable for the first time, enabling users to link to them or from them on the web”. Their short-term goal is: “to reduce the need for multiple codes on packs, while ensuring that we develop a glide path with industry toward a future where a single 2D barcode could serve the needs of all parties.”

EVRYTHNG expect a new standard – giving web addresses to products using GS1 identifiers – to be completed by mid-2018. This puts the industry at an inflection point that can see the world’s consumer products connecting to the Web at massive scale.

Why web-enable consumer products?

Consumers benefit with access to richer product information and digital services on every product. Like, collecting loyalty points, buying or reordering the item, or checking its provenance or authenticity in real-time.

Brands, retailers and manufacturers are able to generate enormous efficiencies with data from and about their products throughout the lifecycle, and connect directly with their customers and consumers via their ‘brand in the hand’.

To learn more about what this means and how to digitize your products, check out our new white paper.

Get started now for free

EVRYTHNG has invested heavily in making it quick and easy for brands to digitize products at scale. This week at the GS1 Global Forum in Brussels we unveiled new tools to connect products with their GS1 identifiers and launch consumer and supply chain applications. Available from today:

QuickStart Online Tool: Create unique digital identities for your products using existing GS1 identifiers in minutes. Check out the video here, and get started with our easy onboarding now.

GS1 URI: You can now use a GS1 URI when creating QR codes, which puts the GTIN and the URL into the same code. The crucial first step towards the end of multiple codes on a product, leading to simpler, more cost-effective packaging.

Packaging integrations: Working with our packaging partners, including WestRock and Crown in the food, beverage and household goods sectors, and Avery Dennison RBIS in the footwear and apparel market, we have standardized the process for embedding GS1 identifiers, linked to digital identities, into products ‘at source’.

We have more exciting product developments coming out over the next weeks, stay tuned.